Darwin was right. Up to a point?

[shunyadragon]

And what is your point? Morris is saying that most Darwinists think that Darwinism is sufficient for explaining biological life and diversity - he is saying that it isn't. And I think he would be in a better position to know what is generally being said in the field than you or I.

The quote is specific enough and phank understood it.

So I guess you changed your mind that the Guardian is a "theist pulp rag?"

If I miss stated I apologize. I was definitely referring to the article, and by the way his book. I question the ethics and integrity of the Guardian for publishing the trash.

[phank]

I question the ethics and integrity of the Guardian for publishing the trash.

I'm going to try to answer this question. The Guardian is a very loosely-edited British tabloid leaning slightly left of center as the British view things. It attempts to cover a wide range of topics appealing to a mass audience, but the editorial staff is limited in a couple of respects. First, they don't have the staff to vet all submissions properly, and second those they do have often know very little about subjects outside political commentary and tend to rubber-stamp what doesn't seem too offensive to them. My experience is, they have a generally awful track record with anything scientific, because their practice is to have science-oriented articles dumbed-down for their target audience, by people not sufficiently knowledgeable to dumb things down without losing the gist of what was written, which wasn't understood in the first place.

The result of this process tends to be articles which are hilariously off the point, completely misleading, or otherwise hopelessly mangled. But it's not a matter of ethics or integrity, it's a matter of incompetence and ignorance, combined with tight schedules, limited budget, and barely-educated target audience.

Bottom line: from reading the Guardian, we really have no reliable idea what Morris is saying, and the person writing the article doesn't either.

[oxmixmudd]

It seems fairly credible evidence of what happens to the mind under circumstances of trauma, oxygen deprivation, etc. Beyond that is frankly wishful thinking. I'm aware that because the mind is the subjective experience of the brain's operation, what the mind "experiences" would of course be a function of what's happening to the brain. I think you're probably aware of that too. Or do you think dreaming you're on the moon after eating spicy foods means you really WERE on the moon, in some objective way?

I guess then you prejudice has kept you from at least looking at the kinds of evidence I'm talking about. When someone dies, reports that they left their body and can report information about the room and areas around the room that they did not have access to lying on the table physically dead, then one can't just dismiss that as a 'figment' of their imagination. There are some possible natural explanations in some cases, but you have to really, really believe there is just nothing more than the physical to accept the kinds of 'explanations' offered to tame some of these events.

Again, I'm not a particular fan of the paranormal, and much of what is claimed is actually contrary to what I believe to be true, just as it is for you - nevertheless, it's out there, and I don't just dismiss it out of hand as you do, even though it challenges my own belief system.

And do you think this is a purely human thing? I know that the mind is very sensitive to what's going on in the brain. I know that some people have an abiding desire to interpret certain subjective experiences in ways that fit theological requirements. I do NOT know of any "challenges" unexplainable by brain operations. There is no evidence of any soul.

That is said as a matter of faith Phank. A person dies, leaves his/her body, observes the goings on out of sight and ear shot during the time they are being revived, then is brought back to report what they saw and heard. It's a bit creepy, but it doesn't lend itself to the explanation you are grasping at here. And as I've said, It conflicts a bit with my 'traditional' Christian view of the afterlife. Nevertheless, a rather large number of people have had these kinds of experiences with our ability to bring people back, and I think it can stand as potential evidence for a soul. For you to glibly declare 'There is no evidence of any soul' in light of that sounds a bit too much to me like 'Madam, you protest too much!" And I know plenty of folks on the Christian side that would take your very same stand on this for much the same reason: It just doesn't fit with your belief system.

There is plenty of evidence of the strong desire to FIND a soul whether one is there or not. There is equally strong evidence of the human ability to find what's strongly desired, If it fits our needs, it becomes "evidence". Otherwise, it neatly fits brain models combined with confirmation bias. Does your religious faith have a sign at the door that says "abandon all reasonable interpretations, all ye who enter here"?

And that doesn't fit the kinds of reports I'm talking about.

This mangles the meaning of "information". We KNOW that certain brain changes produce certain subjective experiences. This is not mis-information. But if you get drunk and the room seems to be spinning around you, this is evidence that you are drunk, NOT evidence that the room is spinning. Out-of-body sensations and "light at the end of a tunnel" impressions seem to be fairly standard subjective interpretations of oxygen deprivation to the brain. They are not evidence of tunnels or the like.

The explanation of oxygen dept can't manufacture the kinds of knowledge of events in adjacent rooms or behind hidden corners that I'm talking about.

You are simply finding what you wish to find. These "credible cases" you cite are what brain changes SEEM like to the mind the brain's operation is sustaining. These are NOT "credible cases of people experiencing conscious existence outside the body", these are credible cases of what the objective reality of brain conditions causes to the subjective impressions drawn by the mind that brain is producing. There are LOTS AND LOTS of cases of people being so drunk the room seems to spin. There are NO cases of spinning rooms! Now, if I just happened to be a member of a faith that regarded spinning rooms as a necessary theological requirement, and I cited all these drunks as "evidence", what would you think might be my motivation?

This is the explanation you use to rationalize your belief the natural is all there is. Biblically, there are limits on the extent to which I can actually explore these issues. That is, the paranormal is basically off limits for the Christian. But I bring these up now primarily to challenge your statement 'there is no evidence for the soul.'. Basically, it appears to me your method of dealing with these issues is not much different from the Catholic clerics that refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Just don't look and thus enjoy plausible deniability -no?

Yes it is. Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man. As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.

This is true - but you take it too far I think. You use it to dismiss the credibility of any religious conviction - a gross misuse of its truth, turning it into untruth by implying the primary, if not only, reason people adopt the faith they have is early training.

I seriously doubt that worry about what others might think is that much worse in old age than in childhood, and often even less. Learning new things simply gets more difficult with age. Not impossible, of course, and I AM making progress. Slowly. And I do try to recapture that childhood sense of enjoying just making noise, any noise. Which is about all I can do, so it's a good exercise.

Well, I wasn't trying to be critical. I actually applaud you trying to learn some new instruments. I've never stopped trying to get better at pretty much everything I do - which invariably implies expansion into new areas. The capability to learn is also something that must be maintained, much like strength or speed or agility. They will after a point decline with age of course, but not nearly so much as is commonly thought if one makes the effort to maintain the capacity.


Jim

[phank]

I guess then you prejudice has kept you from at least looking at the kinds of evidence I'm talking about. When someone dies, reports that they left their body and can report information about the room and areas around the room that they did not have access to lying on the table physically dead, then one can't just dismiss that as a 'figment' of their imagination. There are some possible natural explanations in some cases, but you have to really, really believe there is just nothing more than the physical to accept the kinds of 'explanations' offered to tame some of these events.

Again, I'm not a particular fan of the paranormal, and much of what is claimed is actually contrary to what I believe to be true, just as it is for you - nevertheless, it's out there, and I don't just dismiss it out of hand as you do, even though it challenges my own belief system.

I'm looking for what satisfies me as the most plausible explanation. Now, plausibility is different for different people. Since my model of consciousness is what the brain does, and OUGHT to produce subjectively unusual impressions when the brain undergoes unusual insult, I find this plausible. But I admit I have not done any detailed study of the accounts of these impressions. There might BE something "magical" (that is, unexplainable by ANY plausible mechanism) about these experiences. But presently, I'm skeptical. If you think skepticism and prejudice are alike, I can't disabuse you. Much as you might be skeptical of headless horsemen in the Catskills, whereas your "unwillingness" to go there and investigate might indicate prejudice to me - especially if my religion requires headless horsemen.

That is said as a matter of faith Phank. A person dies, leaves his/her body, observes the goings on out of sight and ear shot during the time they are being revived, then is brought back to report what they saw and heard. It's a bit creepy, but it doesn't lend itself to the explanation you are grasping at here. And as I've said, It conflicts a bit with my 'traditional' Christian view of the afterlife. Nevertheless, a rather large number of people have had these kinds of experiences with our ability to bring people back, and I think it can stand as potential evidence for a soul. For you to glibly declare 'There is no evidence of any soul' in light of that sounds a bit too much to me like 'Madam, you protest too much!" And I know plenty of folks on the Christian side that would take your very same stand on this for much the same reason: It just doesn't fit with your belief system.

I'll go along with this to a certain extent. These are extraordinary claims, and I do not regard the evidence as extraordinary. To me, this sounds very much like the kind of "real-life stories" presented on late-night TV, alongside accounts of ghosts and haunted houses and mediums communicating with the dead. I don't know what your sources are, so I have no idea exactly how carefully they have been validated. What these stories tend to have in common is insult to the physical brain (mostly oxygen deprivation) causing similar subjective "experiences". If you're aware of any systematic, controlled scientific study, I'd be very curious. Otherwise, I find the "soul" theory implausible, or at least a lot less plausible than plenty of more mudane possibilities.

And that doesn't fit the kinds of reports I'm talking about.

Again, I'd need a good reliable source for your reports. Just as a f'rinstance, there are lots of stories of people suddenly waking up or otherwise sensing that someone dear to them is dying, just died, or is in serious trouble far away. And by golly, every now and then it's true! In the vast majority of cases, of course, it's not true and the sensation is soon forgotten and often never even mentioned. And sometimes this sudden sensation is, uh, "recalled" after the fact. And often sincerely. Consider the very similar experiences related under deep hypnosis by UFO abductees. MUCH too similar to be coincidence, so there must be something to it. Pay no attention to the fact that their stories were elicited by the same hypnotist, who just happened to believe HE had such an experience, pretty much like all of theirs.

Rather than just keep piling on examples, I'm trying to suggest WHY someone might be skeptical of such claims. The only "cases" of what you're talking about that I've ever even heard of, have indeed been late-night TV fare.

The explanation of oxygen dept can't manufacture the kinds of knowledge of events in adjacent rooms or behind hidden corners that I'm talking about.

This is why careful evaluation is important. You are a reasonable fellow. You might yourself wonder if adjacent rooms might be quite similar (hospital rooms are all alike), or if voices might be audible to the patient, or if such "knowledge" was both highly unlikely to have been imagined based on what the patient knows and specific enough so that listeners might not color it with their own knowledge. Yet another example is police "clearance" of crimes. A suspect can reduce his sentence by confessing to multiple unsolved crimes he was never caught doing, which "clears" them and makes the police department look better. Of course, suspects don't always remember too many details, so the questioners are pretty willing to fit even hazy details to unsolved crimes, or "feed" the suspect enough information so he can "remember" as many as possible.

What I'm trying to get at here is, IF there is anything genuinely unexplainable here, you would think psychologists would be falling all over themselves finding ways to validate this, eliminate more likely explanations, suggest variations in environments or whatever.

This is the explanation you use to rationalize your belief the natural is all there is.

This is unjustified. I do not believe the natural is "all there is", but I do believe that if there are multiple possible natural causes for something, that's the first place to look.

Biblically, there are limits on the extent to which I can actually explore these issues. That is, the paranormal is basically off limits for the Christian. But I bring these up now primarily to challenge your statement 'there is no evidence for the soul.'. Basically, it appears to me your method of dealing with these issues is not much different from the Catholic clerics that refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Just don't look and thus enjoy plausible deniability -no?

Well, of course I would disagree. I don't think there is anything paranormal going on here. I think there are multiple possible perfectly natural explanations, and that if you had never heard of a "soul", there is nothing here that would suggest any such thing to you, any more than rooms spinning around drunks would suggest divine visitations. I sincerely believe that you are much too eager to grasp the most theologically convenient, LEAST plausible explanation for what you've heard of. However, I do understand that from where I stand, you're being jerked around by your Jesus, and from where you stand I've got my head in the sand for purposes of deliberate blindness. So I'm willing to wager, right now, that WHEN these subjective impressions are investigated more rigorously, they will be fully explainable, just like everything else science has ever investigated, without any need to resort to theologically speculative notions.

This is true - but you take it too far I think. You use it to dismiss the credibility of any religious conviction - a gross misuse of its truth, turning it into untruth by implying the primary, if not only, reason people adopt the faith they have is early training.

This needs to be disentangled a bit. I do not dismiss the credibility of religious conviction. I see a great deal of religioius conviction, presented with utmost credibility. There is no question in my mind that your religious convictions are sincere. I have little doubt that religious conviction easily takes root in the human mind for a variety of good reasons. I consider the substance of most religious faiths - the gods and myths and doctrines - not very credible, but not the conviction itself, which is very real. So the natural question I ask myself is, where do these substantive contents come from? Why would you believe in a demigod rising from the dead, and a Hindu believe in reincarnation, and a Buddhist believing in something very different? It seems pretty evident to me that each of these believers was RAISED believing this stuff, it's embedded in their culture and believed by their parents, etc. Surely you don't think it's pure coincidence that the Buddhist doesn't think Christ died for him, while you don't hope to return as a cow?

Well, I wasn't trying to be critical. I actually applaud you trying to learn some new instruments. I've never stopped trying to get better at pretty much everything I do - which invariably implies expansion into new areas. The capability to learn is also something that must be maintained, much like strength or speed or agility. They will after a point decline with age of course, but not nearly so much as is commonly thought if one makes the effort to maintain the capacity.

Well, at least it keeps life interesting. A number of years ago, I read that if one keeps one's mind active, learning new things, new instruments, doing puzzles, reading and studying, this can postpone the onset of Alzheimers. But recently, much more study has shown that this was never really the case. What all this mental activity did was MASK the early onset of Alzheimers. But once the affliction reach the point where such activities were no longer feasible, the active-minded person was just as far along in the progress of the condition.

(And today I got a pretty complex version of "All the Things You Are" down pretty good, except for a couple of really difficult chord changes. "Pretty good" means, if you knew the song, you'd recognize what I was playing.)

[oxmixmudd]

I'm looking for what satisfies me as the most plausible explanation. Now, plausibility is different for different people. Since my model of consciousness is what the brain does, and OUGHT to produce subjectively unusual impressions when the brain undergoes unusual insult, I find this plausible. But I admit I have not done any detailed study of the accounts of these impressions. There might BE something "magical" (that is, unexplainable by ANY plausible mechanism) about these experiences. But presently, I'm skeptical. If you think skepticism and prejudice are alike, I can't disabuse you. Much as you might be skeptical of headless horsemen in the Catskills, whereas your "unwillingness" to go there and investigate might indicate prejudice to me - especially if my religion requires headless horsemen.


I'll go along with this to a certain extent. These are extraordinary claims, and I do not regard the evidence as extraordinary. To me, this sounds very much like the kind of "real-life stories" presented on late-night TV, alongside accounts of ghosts and haunted houses and mediums communicating with the dead. I don't know what your sources are, so I have no idea exactly how carefully they have been validated. What these stories tend to have in common is insult to the physical brain (mostly oxygen deprivation) causing similar subjective "experiences". If you're aware of any systematic, controlled scientific study, I'd be very curious. Otherwise, I find the "soul" theory implausible, or at least a lot less plausible than plenty of more mudane possibilities.


Again, I'd need a good reliable source for your reports. Just as a f'rinstance, there are lots of stories of people suddenly waking up or otherwise sensing that someone dear to them is dying, just died, or is in serious trouble far away. And by golly, every now and then it's true! In the vast majority of cases, of course, it's not true and the sensation is soon forgotten and often never even mentioned. And sometimes this sudden sensation is, uh, "recalled" after the fact. And often sincerely. Consider the very similar experiences related under deep hypnosis by UFO abductees. MUCH too similar to be coincidence, so there must be something to it. Pay no attention to the fact that their stories were elicited by the same hypnotist, who just happened to believe HE had such an experience, pretty much like all of theirs.

Rather than just keep piling on examples, I'm trying to suggest WHY someone might be skeptical of such claims. The only "cases" of what you're talking about that I've ever even heard of, have indeed been late-night TV fare.


This is why careful evaluation is important. You are a reasonable fellow. You might yourself wonder if adjacent rooms might be quite similar (hospital rooms are all alike), or if voices might be audible to the patient, or if such "knowledge" was both highly unlikely to have been imagined based on what the patient knows and specific enough so that listeners might not color it with their own knowledge. Yet another example is police "clearance" of crimes. A suspect can reduce his sentence by confessing to multiple unsolved crimes he was never caught doing, which "clears" them and makes the police department look better. Of course, suspects don't always remember too many details, so the questioners are pretty willing to fit even hazy details to unsolved crimes, or "feed" the suspect enough information so he can "remember" as many as possible.

What I'm trying to get at here is, IF there is anything genuinely unexplainable here, you would think psychologists would be falling all over themselves finding ways to validate this, eliminate more likely explanations, suggest variations in environments or whatever.

This is unjustified. I do not believe the natural is "all there is", but I do believe that if there are multiple possible natural causes for something, that's the first place to look.

Well, of course I would disagree. I don't think there is anything paranormal going on here. I think there are multiple possible perfectly natural explanations, and that if you had never heard of a "soul", there is nothing here that would suggest any such thing to you, any more than rooms spinning around drunks would suggest divine visitations. I sincerely believe that you are much too eager to grasp the most theologically convenient, LEAST plausible explanation for what you've heard of. However, I do understand that from where I stand, you're being jerked around by your Jesus, and from where you stand I've got my head in the sand for purposes of deliberate blindness. So I'm willing to wager, right now, that WHEN these subjective impressions are investigated more rigorously, they will be fully explainable, just like everything else science has ever investigated, without any need to resort to theologically speculative notions.


This needs to be disentangled a bit. I do not dismiss the credibility of religious conviction. I see a great deal of religioius conviction, presented with utmost credibility. There is no question in my mind that your religious convictions are sincere. I have little doubt that religious conviction easily takes root in the human mind for a variety of good reasons. I consider the substance of most religious faiths - the gods and myths and doctrines - not very credible, but not the conviction itself, which is very real. So the natural question I ask myself is, where do these substantive contents come from? Why would you believe in a demigod rising from the dead, and a Hindu believe in reincarnation, and a Buddhist believing in something very different? It seems pretty evident to me that each of these believers was RAISED believing this stuff, it's embedded in their culture and believed by their parents, etc. Surely you don't think it's pure coincidence that the Buddhist doesn't think Christ died for him, while you don't hope to return as a cow?


Well, at least it keeps life interesting. A number of years ago, I read that if one keeps one's mind active, learning new things, new instruments, doing puzzles, reading and studying, this can postpone the onset of Alzheimers. But recently, much more study has shown that this was never really the case. What all this mental activity did was MASK the early onset of Alzheimers. But once the affliction reach the point where such activities were no longer feasible, the active-minded person was just as far along in the progress of the condition.

(And today I got a pretty complex version of "All the Things You Are" down pretty good, except for a couple of really difficult chord changes. "Pretty good" means, if you knew the song, you'd recognize what I was playing.)

In one sense Phank I agree, in that a good many of these issues are 'late night fare'. But there are enough that have caught my eye over the years that to me they invite the plausibility of a soul. But I will not try to argue that is not because I already believe there is one. Assuming for the moment the evidence was such that the objective 'plausibility probability' was 50%, it is likely each of us would see it as 60% in our favor Such is the nature of the human mind I guess.

As for the music - 'good on you' as our Aussie friends might say (Hi Roland! (wattsr1)). The truth is the more of us that maintain our capabilities in the arts and in the sciences, the better off the entire society, even the entire world is. The human 'soul' is sullied by mediocrity and laziness and enriched by the sciences and the arts. Would that more were like you.


Jim

[phank]

In one sense Phank I agree, in that a good many of these issues are 'late night fare'. But there are enough that have caught my eye over the years that to me they invite the plausibility of a soul. But I will not try to argue that is not because I already believe there is one. Assuming for the moment the evidence was such that the objective 'plausibility probability' was 50%, it is likely each of us would see it as 60% in our favor Such is the nature of the human mind I guess.

Well, so long as we realize that those occasions where nothing like this happened do NOT make the late night show, and those that DO are, uh, produced to maximize the desired impression, which brings in the largest audience, which watches the most ads, etc. Hopefully you realize that the requirements of the medium of presentation militate strongly against anything like a rigorous examination of ANY of these claims. These shows are just like the haunted house shows, or the celebrities-who-saw-ghosts shows. A plausibility probability above zero, under these circumstances, is stretching things. This stuff is NOT "evidence" in any scientific sense - it would actually be lousy TV, except that widespread belief in souls in our culture give it some pull.

As for the music - 'good on you' as our Aussie friends might say (Hi Roland! (wattsr1)). The truth is the more of us that maintain our capabilities in the arts and in the sciences, the better off the entire society, even the entire world is. The human 'soul' is sullied by mediocrity and laziness and enriched by the sciences and the arts. Would that more were like you.

Beats being bored! As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

The world is so full of a number of things
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings

[seer]

This stuff is NOT "evidence" in any scientific sense - it would actually be lousy TV, except that widespread belief in souls in our culture give it some pull.

Of course, probably most of our personal history and experience would not qualify as "evidence" in a scientific sense. Yet these personal encounters are as true or real as anything discovered by science. And then we could get into the whole Descartes thing... So the question is - why does science have a lock on discovering truth or fact - and if it doesn't - why even make this point?

[phank]

Of course, probably most of our personal history and experience would not qualify as "evidence" in a scientific sense. Yet these personal encounters are as true or real as anything discovered by science. And then we could get into the whole Descartes thing... So the question is - why does science have a lock on discovering truth or fact - and if it doesn't - why even make this point?

OK, this is a fair question, and I'll try to give it a fair answer.

You are quite correct that most of our daily personal experiences would not qualify as scientific evidence. Your use of the word "true", however, is double-edged. If I get drunk and the room seems to be spinning around me, what exactly is "true" in that situation? Certainly my impression of a spinning room is true. But it is NOT true that the room itself is spinning. If science is only capable of determining whether the room is objectively spinning, science doesn't have the "whole truth" because there is no way (at least currently) to capture and measure my subjective sensations. Science has proved an extraordinarily effective method for determining what IS, but is a long long way from getting any sort of handle on what we THINK or FEEL is, or ought to be, the case.

So in the situation we've been discussing, subjective impressions of traumatized and oxygen-starved brains, science has no way to pin down and analyze those subjective impressions. Science CAN quite easily determine, using standard scientific techniques, whether there is some NON-subjective phenomenon happening here. Much as science investigated paranormal and psi phenomena and determined that objectively they don't exist, despite the sincerity of belief of the subjects.

IF it should turn out to be the case that those late-night-TV accounts represent some common pattern (common in two ways - that nearly all patients experience it, and that their experience is similiar in nearly all cases), then this might provide us some interesting insight into what is happening neurologically under those conditions.

The question here isn't whether BELIEF in souls exists. Clearly there is a lot of that belief within some religions. The question is whether souls themselves exist. Science is not currently competent to address the belief, which represents some complex and likely dynamic neurological combination of trigger patterns, memories, etc. But science is very good at determining whether there is objective evidence of something unexplainable according to current understandings of physics, etc.

So science has a super track record at discovering ]objective truth or fact. When we get to "personal truth" (aka "making stuff up"), this is a level of psychology science cannot yet address effectively.

[Roy]

I guess then you prejudice has kept you from at least looking at the kinds of evidence I'm talking about. When someone dies,...

Dies how? Breathing stopped? Heart stopped? Loss of brain activity? Stopped hearts are recoverable from, brain cessation may or may not be.

... reports that they left their body and can report information about the room and areas around the room that they did not have access to lying on the table physically dead, then one can't just dismiss that as a 'figment' of their imagination. There are some possible natural explanations in some cases, but you have to really, really believe there is just nothing more than the physical to accept the kinds of 'explanations' offered to tame some of these events.

I'm not aware of any case that has been validated - the only ones I know of have no more credibility than reports of psychic viewing.

I vaguely recall the results of experiments done in sensory deprivation chambers where volunteers were able to move their internal perspective point to different parts of their body and even outside their body, which may be relevant. I've even tried doing it, without success.

Roy

[seer]

OK, this is a fair question, and I'll try to give it a fair answer.

You are quite correct that most of our daily personal experiences would not qualify as scientific evidence. Your use of the word "true", however, is double-edged. If I get drunk and the room seems to be spinning around me, what exactly is "true" in that situation? Certainly my impression of a spinning room is true. But it is NOT true that the room itself is spinning. If science is only capable of determining whether the room is objectively spinning, science doesn't have the "whole truth" because there is no way (at least currently) to capture and measure my subjective sensations. Science has proved an extraordinarily effective method for determining what IS, but is a long long way from getting any sort of handle on what we THINK or FEEL is, or ought to be, the case.

Ok, not much to disagree with here.

So in the situation we've been discussing, subjective impressions of traumatized and oxygen-starved brains, science has no way to pin down and analyze those subjective impressions. Science CAN quite easily determine, using standard scientific techniques, whether there is some NON-subjective phenomenon happening here. Much as science investigated paranormal and psi phenomena and determined that objectively they don't exist, despite the sincerity of belief of the subjects.

If there is a spiritual side to to man these experiences may never be qualified by scientific investigation. But that would not make them any less "true."

The question here isn't whether BELIEF in souls exists. Clearly there is a lot of that belief within some religions. The question is whether souls themselves exist. Science is not currently competent to address the belief, which represents some complex and likely dynamic neurological combination of trigger patterns, memories, etc. But science is very good at determining whether there is objective evidence of something unexplainable according to current understandings of physics, etc.

So science has a super track record at discovering ]objective truth or fact. When we get to "personal truth" (aka "making stuff up"), this is a level of psychology science cannot yet address effectively.

Since science can not address this at present then how do you know that people were "making stuff up."

[phank]

If there is a spiritual side to to man these experiences may never be qualified by scientific investigation. But that would not make them any less "true."

The problem here is, we are hypothesizing in the dark. IF there is a spiritual side, and IF your spirituality has got it correct, and IF there will never be any way to validate it objectively, etc. Yes, pile up enough IFs, and we can arrive at any foregone conclusion we can imagine. We are STILL back where the room SEEMS to the drunk to be spinning. In what sense is the spinning "real"? If you wish to call it a spiritual sense, that's fine.

Since science can not address this at present then how do you know that people were "making stuff up."

Not what I said. I said that things people make up are not currently examinable by science. And THAT means that science cannot tell whether things are made up or not, except to evaluate the objective reality science CAN examine, to see if it agrees with the subjective impressions. If it does not, then we're back to specifying in what sense the spinning is "real".

You raise an interesting and rather deep issue here, one with which science has wrestled for centuries. And that is the issue of what's been called "intersubjective validation". For example, it's been determined that less than about 1% of what hits your eye, gets "seen" by your conscious mind. The rest is filtered out as noise, and experience "fills in" what was most probably there at a low level, while the subconscious interprets the result and presents to your conscious mind an often drastically edited picture. The same is true of ALL of our senses. What this means is, our conscious perception of our sensory data is almost entirely a fabrication. This is true of EVERYONE, except perhaps for infants whose brains haven't developed all this editing capability yet.

So how can anyone, scientist or not, determine how close his subjective evaluation of his experiences comes to the external reality? The best anyone can do right now is to find a consensus that, yea verily, we all agree on what we're seeing. And based on this consensus, make predictions and repeat the process. It's slow, and error prone, but necessary because our brains make stuff up. Constantly, as a matter of course. We REALLY DO see what we expect to see. Our brains fill it in for us autonomically, beyond conscious control.

So a lot of the scientific enterprise - replication, full disclosure of methods, peer review, accuracy of predictions, etc. - exists in an effort to cancel out the "making stuff up" process as much as possible, to see the world through a glass darkly. Not an easy process.

[seer]

The problem here is, we are hypothesizing in the dark. IF there is a spiritual side, and IF your spirituality has got it correct, and IF there will never be any way to validate it objectively, etc. Yes, pile up enough IFs, and we can arrive at any foregone conclusion we can imagine. We are STILL back where the room SEEMS to the drunk to be spinning. In what sense is the spinning "real"? If you wish to call it a spiritual sense, that's fine.

But again P, it would not matter if you couldn't validate it in a scientific sense - science is not the only avenue to truth or fact.

You raise an interesting and rather deep issue here, one with which science has wrestled for centuries. And that is the issue of what's been called "intersubjective validation". For example, it's been determined that less than about 1% of what hits your eye, gets "seen" by your conscious mind. The rest is filtered out as noise, and experience "fills in" what was most probably there at a low level, while the subconscious interprets the result and presents to your conscious mind an often drastically edited picture. The same is true of ALL of our senses. What this means is, our conscious perception of our sensory data is almost entirely a fabrication. This is true of EVERYONE, except perhaps for infants whose brains haven't developed all this editing capability yet.

No P, it is even worse than that as Descartes showed centuries ago. You can not even prove, rationally, that what goes on in your mind corresponds to reality. In that sense, we all live by an unprovable "faith."

[phank]

But again P, it would not matter if you couldn't validate it in a scientific sense - science is not the only avenue to truth or fact.

Well, as I said to Jim, it's in the same category as pink unicorns. While science is only the best avenue to scientific truth, and certainly there are other kinds of truths, when a THING is alleged to exist as a reified object, rather than as something wafting through our imaginations, then science IS the only reliable avenue ever discovered.

No P, it is even worse than that as Descartes showed centuries ago. You can not even prove, rationally, that what goes on in your mind corresponds to reality. In that sense, we all live by an unprovable "faith."

I find this to be a rather empty philosophy. Yes, you cannot Absolutely Prove that YOU exist, much less anything else. But when we're talking about what probably exists to a degree of likelihood WAY higher than 99%, to me this is something very very different from something I might simply make up in a dream.

(And frankly, I'm always a bit suspicious of those who, when their religious faith is being doubted, suddenly start waving the ultimate unknowability of everything around. The clear implication seems to be that since nothing is Absolutely Provable, THEREFORE nothing is any more "real" than anything else, and THEREFORE souls are as "real" as bricks. And I regard this approach as fundamentally dishonest, because it equates 0.1% probable with 99.9% probable on the grounds that neither is 100%. But those things are NOT equally probable. But hey, if you don't think anything learned through the scientific method is valid because it is not Absolutely Guaranteed, why are you conversing over the internet? After all, by your argument, the internet is no more "real" than pink unicorns anyway.)

[Xru]

No P, it is even worse than that as Descartes showed centuries ago. You can not even prove, rationally, that what goes on in your mind corresponds to reality. In that sense, we all live by an unprovable "faith."

I didn't know there was anyone else on tWeb crazy enough to go for this line of thought. But I 100% agree.

I've thought for a rather long time that the only thing that is required of what my mind corresponds to is that that correspondence allows me to act in an appropriate way in the world. As long as that is fulfilled my psychological life could be completely inaccurate and I believe it probably has NO relation to what is really "out their" other than that small preceding requirement.

[phank]

I didn't know there was anyone else on tWeb crazy enough to go for this line of thought. But I 100% agree.

I've thought for a rather long time that the only thing that is required of what my mind corresponds to is that that correspondence allows me to act in an appropriate way in the world. As long as that is fulfilled my psychological life could be completely inaccurate and I believe it probably has NO relation to what is really "out their" other than that small preceding requirement.

Not all that small, since that requirement is what's necessary for you to do things like eat, sleep, breathe, and function correctly within extremely complex yet close tolerances. Things like, you know, posting to the net or learning about the world or holding and performing a job or interacting with people or getting dressed. Stuff like that. You wouldn't survive any longer than a month-old infant if your mental model of the reality around you were not extremely accurate in countless ways. Not perfect, but very very close.

Think about this. You wouldn't survive more than a few moments doing almost anything if your understanding of reality weren't extremely accurate in tens of thousands of different ways. Just walking across the room would require "coincidences" on the order of flipping heads with an honest coin 100 times in a row. Sure, you can be WAY off in ways that don't really affect your well-being in any direct way, but if Descartes himself were required to find his mouth just by random guessing, he'd have starved to death quite quickly. Maybe Descartes could not have Absolutely Proved that he knew how to find his mouth, but in pragmatic terms, that's a silly philosophy.