Existence of the Soul

[siliconwafer]

I know about three philosophical arguments that are used to prove the existence of the soul. What do you think about these arguments?

1. The Argument from Intentionality
All of us have thoughts and those thoughts are about something. For example, if you are thinking of baseball, then you are having thoughts about baseball. The idea that your thoughts are about something is called “intentionality.” In other words, your thoughts have the quality of “aboutness” and “aboutness” is called “intentionality.” Your thoughts refer to things outside of themselves. Your thoughts transcend themselves and your mind as they refer to people, places, or things. This quality of aboutness or intentionality is something that physical objects do not have. Physical objects do not refer outside themselves in the same way that thoughts do.

2. Mental phenomena are not identical with physical entities
There are things that are true of mental phenomena, which are not true of physical entities like neurons. Physical entities like neurons are spatially located, but one’s beliefs, thoughts, and desires are not. Physical entities have physical properties such as electrical charge, mass, volume, and so on, but mental phenomena do not have those properties. It makes no sense to say that my thought of San Francisco is two millimeters long or that it is located one millimeter away from my right ear or that it has a certain weight and smell.

3. The Knowledge Argument developed by Frank Jackson
Suppose there is a scientist who spends her entire life in a black and white room and she never sees color. She learns everything there is to know about how people perceive color. She learns about all of the brain states that are related with perceiving color. If she were to step out of the room and observe colorful things such as a rainbow, a multi-colored jacket, and so on would she learn something new? The answer is “Yes.” Having firsthand experience of seeing color is not identical with knowing the physiology of seeing color. One’s subjective experience of what color looks like does not have the same properties as one’s knowledge of the physiology of seeing color. If they had the same properties, then the scientist would not learn anything new upon leaving the room and seeing different colors.

[shunyadragon]

I know about three philosophical arguments that are used to prove the existence of the soul. What do you think about these arguments?

1. The Argument from Intentionality
All of us have thoughts and those thoughts are about something. For example, if you are thinking of baseball, then you are having thoughts about baseball. The idea that your thoughts are about something is called “intentionality.” In other words, your thoughts have the quality of “aboutness” and “aboutness” is called “intentionality.” Your thoughts refer to things outside of themselves. Your thoughts transcend themselves and your mind as they refer to people, places, or things. This quality of aboutness or intentionality is something that physical objects do not have. Physical objects do not refer outside themselves in the same way that thoughts do.

2. Mental phenomena are not identical with physical entities
There are things that are true of mental phenomena, which are not true of physical entities like neurons. Physical entities like neurons are spatially located, but one’s beliefs, thoughts, and desires are not. Physical entities have physical properties such as electrical charge, mass, volume, and so on, but mental phenomena do not have those properties. It makes no sense to say that my thought of San Francisco is two millimeters long or that it is located one millimeter away from my right ear or that it has a certain weight and smell.

3. The Knowledge Argument developed by Frank Jackson
Suppose there is a scientist who spends her entire life in a black and white room and she never sees color. She learns everything there is to know about how people perceive color. She learns about all of the brain states that are related with perceiving color. If she were to step out of the room and observe colorful things such as a rainbow, a multi-colored jacket, and so on would she learn something new? The answer is “Yes.” Having firsthand experience of seeing color is not identical with knowing the physiology of seeing color. One’s subjective experience of what color looks like does not have the same properties as one’s knowledge of the physiology of seeing color. If they had the same properties, then the scientist would not learn anything new upon leaving the room and seeing different colors.

I am a theist and believe in the soul, but find these arguments very inadequate. At present the scientific knowledge of our nervous system and brain can adequately explain the above as simply related to the physical activity of the brain and nervous system.

[technomage]

1. Apples to coconuts comparison. You cannot compare an object that possesses a trait with objects that do not posses said trait and say "Ergo, the first object possesses a trait not mentioned in the comparison."

2. Ignores "emergent properties."

3. Has to do with knowledge, but nothing to do with the existence of a soul.

[pancreasman]

If someone could tell me what a soul does and does not do, or give some hint of its properties I would be more disposed to being convinced by abstruse philosophical arguments.

[ZackMartin]

Hi

Here's a different way of looking at the issue. Let's ask the question: What is the relationship between mind and matter? There are three possible answers:

1. materialism: mind is a product of matter. Matter alone has fundamental and independent existence. Mind is derivative, its existence depends on matter.
2. idealism: matter is a product of mind. Mind alone has fundamental and independent existence. Matter is derivative, its existence depends on mind.
3. dualism: mind and matter are separate and independent existents. Neither is reducible to the other; yet somehow, they interact

The term "soul" is synonymous with "fundamentally immaterial mind", so it implies either the idealist or dualist position. But by phrasing the question in that way, you are setting up the burden of proof to favour the materialists - making materialism the default assumption, with nothing to prove, while demanding that the idealists and dualists prove their case.

When instead we ask the question "Which of these three positions is true?", no longer have we set things up the burden of proof in favour of one of them. It would seem they all have equal burden of proof.

Actually, I think dualism has a problem that materialism and idealism lack. Dualism needs to explain how mind and matter come to interact, despite being separate and independently existing things. Neither materialism nor idealism have this problem, since the interaction of two things is trivial to explain when one of them is reducible to the other - it turns into the more basic one interacting with itself. For this reason, I think dualism has a greater burden to overcome than materialism or idealism.

But between idealism and materialism, I believe the burden of proof is equal. The fact that they are symmetrical mirror images of each other, to a significant degree - many (but maybe not all) statements about one can be converted into a statement about the other simply by exchanging the words "matter" and "mind" - suggests to me that we should assign them an equal burden of proof.

Regards, Zack

[pancreasman]

Hi

Here's a different way of looking at the issue. Let's ask the question: What is the relationship between mind and matter? There are three possible answers:

1. materialism: mind is a product of matter. Matter alone has fundamental and independent existence. Mind is derivative, its existence depends on matter.
2. idealism: matter is a product of mind. Mind alone has fundamental and independent existence. Matter is derivative, its existence depends on mind.
3. dualism: mind and matter are separate and independent existents. Neither is reducible to the other; yet somehow, they interact

The term "soul" is synonymous with "fundamentally immaterial mind", so it implies either the idealist or dualist position. But by phrasing the question in that way, you are setting up the burden of proof to favour the materialists - making materialism the default assumption, with nothing to prove, while demanding that the idealists and dualists prove their case.

When instead we ask the question "Which of these three positions is true?", no longer have we set things up the burden of proof in favour of one of them. It would seem they all have equal burden of proof.

Actually, I think dualism has a problem that materialism and idealism lack. Dualism needs to explain how mind and matter come to interact, despite being separate and independently existing things. Neither materialism nor idealism have this problem, since the interaction of two things is trivial to explain when one of them is reducible to the other - it turns into the more basic one interacting with itself. For this reason, I think dualism has a greater burden to overcome than materialism or idealism.

But between idealism and materialism, I believe the burden of proof is equal. The fact that they are symmetrical mirror images of each other, to a significant degree - many (but maybe not all) statements about one can be converted into a statement about the other simply by exchanging the words "matter" and "mind" - suggests to me that we should assign them an equal burden of proof.

Regards, Zack

I wonder if we're not having a problem with language here, by referring to mind and matter as two entities of enough equivalence as to make comparisons of them meaningful. 'Mind' is a subjective experience. The only mind I have any direct experience of is my own, and that experience is entirely subjective. Matter, on the other hand, at least at first blush has objective qualities which may be experienced by any number of observers and those qualities may be more or less agreed on. If I say 'I have an apple and it's red' you can say 'Show me' and then 'Yep, he has a red apple alright'. Nothing remotely similar can be done with a mind.

I would also challenge your idea that souls are equated to 'fundamentally immaterial mind'. Most people mean something far more permanent and unchanging than the mind experience which varies with age, time of day, state of consciousness, health, brain injury and so on. I would suggest that minds are an ongoing subjective changing experience and not a 'thing' in themselves.

Unless one is going to go down the road of solipsism, it's a pretty good bet that matter has an existence independent of anyone's mind. In other words, matter has established strongly that it exists. Immaterial stuff, by virtue of its nature has a much more difficult job ahead of it to establish its existence.

[ZackMartin]

I wonder if we're not having a problem with language here, by referring to mind and matter as two entities of enough equivalence as to make comparisons of them meaningful. 'Mind' is a subjective experience. The only mind I have any direct experience of is my own, and that experience is entirely subjective. Matter, on the other hand, at least at first blush has objective qualities which may be experienced by any number of observers and those qualities may be more or less agreed on. If I say 'I have an apple and it's red' you can say 'Show me' and then 'Yep, he has a red apple alright'. Nothing remotely similar can be done with a mind.

Mind is not purely subjective, it has objective elements. Think about our conversation - I've never met you in person, I have no idea what you look like, but I can learn a lot about the kind of mind you have from your words - and the same applies in reverse, you are learning about my mind from this conversation, even as you learn nothing about my body. People will say things like "He has a beautiful mind but an ugly body", and you understand what people are saying when they say that. So there is an objective element about the mind, independent of the body. (You can claim that all your knowledge of my mind is reducible to some states of my brain, but you can't describe what any of those brain states actually are, whereas you can describe at least some aspects of my mind, e.g. what opinions it has, what its areas of interest are, what is its style of argumentation, what kind of language it uses, etc.)

I suspect that, the reason why my question seems invalid to you, is that you have already committed to a particular answer to it (the materialist one). Would the question make more sense to someone who had not already made up their mind about what the answer was?

I would also challenge your idea that souls are equated to 'fundamentally immaterial mind'. Most people mean something far more permanent and unchanging than the mind experience which varies with age, time of day, state of consciousness, health, brain injury and so on. I would suggest that minds are an ongoing subjective changing experience and not a 'thing' in themselves.

Something can change but remain the same thing. So I don't think the fact that the mind changes means it can't be the soul. I am a very different person today than I was twenty years ago, but I'm still the same me. The mind can change in its content and properties, yet still remain the same mind.

Unless one is going to go down the road of solipsism, it's a pretty good bet that matter has an existence independent of anyone's mind.

You are confusing two separate issues - how many minds exist, and whether matter can exist independently of mind. Solipsists insist that only one mind exist. A non-solipsist idealist can say that many minds exist, and that material things are a collective product of those minds. I am not a solipsist; I believe in many minds other than my own.

In other words, matter has established strongly that it exists.

As an idealist, I don't deny that matter exists. I just deny that it exists independently of mind. We all agree that matter exists, so no evidence is needed on that point; but you have not provided any evidence that it exists independently of mind. Why believe a claim without evidence?

Immaterial stuff, by virtue of its nature has a much more difficult job ahead of it to establish its existence.

Really? The number 7 exists, and it's not a material object.

Zack

[Chrawnus]

idealism: matter is a product of mind. Mind alone has fundamental and independent existence. Matter is derivative, its existence depends on mind.

If we go by that definition of idealism, then most Christians are idealists, due to our belief that a mind (God) created the universe and is currently upholding the universe through His power. (i.e matter was created by a mind, and is dependent on the same mind in order to continue existing.)

[ZackMartin]

If we go by that definition of idealism, then most Christians are idealists, due to our belief that a mind (God) created the universe and is currently upholding the universe through His power. (i.e matter was created by a mind, and is dependent on the same mind in order to continue existing.)

You do raise an interesting point there. In my own conceptualisation of the issue, though, I think the question of the relationship between mind and matter is a distinct question from the question of whether God exists - although I don't believe you can answer one entirely independently of the other either.

Myself, I am an idealist theist. I think many, maybe most, idealists are theists of some form or another, although I know of one well-known idealist, John McTaggart, who was an atheist. Some forms of Buddhism may count as atheistic idealism also.

One of the most important figures in the Western tradition of idealism, George Berkeley, was a Bishop in the Church of Ireland. I think both dualism and idealism have had many proponents among Christians; I don't think there are very many Christian materialists, although there might be a few. Berkeley claimed that objects only exist when being observed by a mind - but then he said that the mind of God observes all, so things continue to exist even when we personally are not looking at them. (I am not inclined to agree with Berkeley on that, but we can leave that discussion for another time.)

Zack

[pancreasman]

Mind is not purely subjective, it has objective elements. Think about our conversation - I've never met you in person, I have no idea what you look like, but I can learn a lot about the kind of mind you have from your words - and the same applies in reverse, you are learning about my mind from this conversation, even as you learn nothing about my body. People will say things like "He has a beautiful mind but an ugly body", and you understand what people are saying when they say that.

I'm not learning about your mind, I'm learning about what you think. Are you saying that the mind is just the contents of its thoughts at any particular moment?

I suspect that, the reason why my question seems invalid to you, is that you have already committed to a particular answer to it (the materialist one). Would the question make more sense to someone who had not already made up their mind about what the answer was?

Your suspicion would be incorrect. In any case, as you later explain, you also have already made up your mind on the issue and don't seem to find that an issue.

So there is an objective element about the mind, independent of the body. (You can claim that all your knowledge of my mind is reducible to some states of my brain, but you can't describe what any of those brain states actually are, whereas you can describe at least some aspects of my mind, e.g. what opinions it has, what its areas of interest are, what is its style of argumentation, what kind of language it uses, etc.)

There is no objective elements of your mind independent of your body. You can't have a mind without a body. If you have news that this is false, please demonstrate it. Again you are equating the mind, and with it the soul, with the changing ongoing processes of consciousness.

Something can change but remain the same thing. So I don't think the fact that the mind changes means it can't be the soul. I am a very different person today than I was twenty years ago, but I'm still the same me. The mind can change in its content and properties, yet still remain the same mind.

This passage seems contradictory and I really don't know what you mean. How exactly can something change but remain the same. In what way are you the same you? Is the mind its contents or is it more than that? What is there to the mind that is NOT its contents and changing properties?

You are confusing two separate issues - how many minds exist, and whether matter can exist independently of mind. Solipsists insist that only one mind exist. A non-solipsist idealist can say that many minds exist, and that material things are a collective product of those minds. I am not a solipsist; I believe in many minds other than my own.

How does this collective creation work? Is it democratic? Americans are bitterly divided over who should be president. How can they co-create an entire reality? If humans co-create the material world, why do we create it so the experience of it is such a negative one for so many humans? Do non-humans have minds? If all minds combine to make one mega-mind what does it think? Did the Earth exist before there were people? If so, why?

As an idealist, I don't deny that matter exists. I just deny that it exists independently of mind. We all agree that matter exists, so no evidence is needed on that point; but you have not provided any evidence that it exists independently of mind. Why believe a claim without evidence?

In case you hadn't noticed I was critiquing your premise at a much more basic level by suggesting that minds as you have defined them don't exist apart from subjective experience. I have provided no evidence that matter exists independently of a Strauss waltz either but I strangely feel little pressure to do so. You are apparently making a claim that matter arises from mind (whose mind is unclear). What is your evidence. If we find we are arguing about whether dragons speak French or German and neither of us has any evidence it may just be because there are no dragons.

Really? The number 7 exists, and it's not a material object.

The number 7 does not exist in anything like the same way as an apple. The number 7 is a mental abstraction. Do all mental abstractions exist? Along with Plato do you believe an ideal chair exists of which all material chairs are crude physical imitations? If it does, who sits on it? Does the number 7 exist for a snail?

Sorry to seem so critical and this will be my last post made in such a detailed response. It just seems to me, and I may be as wrong about you as you are about me, that you are looking for a way for what you'd like to be true to be true and in so doing skipping over some of your own presumptions.

[ZackMartin]

Mind is not purely subjective, it has objective elements. Think about our conversation - I've never met you in person, I have no idea what you look like, but I can learn a lot about the kind of mind you have from your words - and the same applies in reverse, you are learning about my mind from this conversation, even as you learn nothing about my body. People will say things like "He has a beautiful mind but an ugly body", and you understand what people are saying when they say that.

I'm not learning about your mind, I'm learning about what you think. Are you saying that the mind is just the contents of its thoughts at any particular moment?

There is more to the mind than just its thoughts, but the thoughts of a mind are a major aspect of it. I never said you were learning all there is to know about my mind; just that you were learning something about my mind, and my thoughts are an important aspect of my mind (but by no means the only aspect.) And while you are learning something about my mind, you are learning nothing about my body.

I suspect that, the reason why my question seems invalid to you, is that you have already committed to a particular answer to it (the materialist one). Would the question make more sense to someone who had not already made up their mind about what the answer was?

Your suspicion would be incorrect. In any case, as you later explain, you also have already made up your mind on the issue and don't seem to find that an issue.

I posed the question of which view was correct, idealism, materialism or dualism, and how we can know which one is correct. You immediately responded with a materialist attack on the concept of "mind", to try to undermine the question. I could equally have responded with an idealist attack on the concept of "matter", in order to undermine the question, but I chose not to. You may say that mind is nothing more than patterns in matter, but I can say that matter is nothing more than patterns in mind.

So there is an objective element about the mind, independent of the body. (You can claim that all your knowledge of my mind is reducible to some states of my brain, but you can't describe what any of those brain states actually are, whereas you can describe at least some aspects of my mind, e.g. what opinions it has, what its areas of interest are, what is its style of argumentation, what kind of language it uses, etc.)

There is no objective elements of your mind independent of your body.

So you assert. I could equally assert that there are no objective elements of the physical universe independent of the minds that observe it. Competing assertions don't get us very far though.

You can't have a mind without a body.

So you assert. And I can assert the opposite, that you can't have a physical universe without minds observing it.

If you have news that this is false, please demonstrate it.

Why does the burden of proof rely solely on my ideas, and not on yours? You seem to think that to idealists belong all the burden of proof, and to materialists none. How about we propose instead that the burden of proof is equal on both sides. Wouldn't that be the more rational approach?

Again you are equating the mind, and with it the soul, with the changing ongoing processes of consciousness.

If you don't agree with my definitions of "mind" and "soul", provide alternatives.

Something can change but remain the same thing. So I don't think the fact that the mind changes means it can't be the soul. I am a very different person today than I was twenty years ago, but I'm still the same me. The mind can change in its content and properties, yet still remain the same mind.

This passage seems contradictory and I really don't know what you mean. How exactly can something change but remain the same.

Something can change its properties without changing its identity. Angela is unmarried today and married tomorrow, but Angela is still Angela. If we took your approach to its logical conclusion, then it would be impossible for objects to exist across time, since as soon as the object changed in even the slightest, it would no longer be the same object, but rather a different one.

In what way are you the same you? Is the mind its contents or is it more than that? What is there to the mind that is NOT its contents and changing properties?

An analogy for a materialist: A photon leaves the surface of the sun, and a few minutes later it hits the surface of the earth. Along its journey, the photon's position is constantly changing, but it is still the same photon. So an entity's properties can change, even while it remains the same entity. In the same way, the contents of my mind can change, even while it remains the same mind.

You are confusing two separate issues - how many minds exist, and whether matter can exist independently of mind. Solipsists insist that only one mind exist. A non-solipsist idealist can say that many minds exist, and that material things are a collective product of those minds. I am not a solipsist; I believe in many minds other than my own.

How does this collective creation work? Is it democratic? Americans are bitterly divided over who should be president. How can they co-create an entire reality?

In my belief, physical objects are just patterns which exist in the experiences of minds. These patterns exist, not just within one mind, but also among different minds. (We both look at a tree - even if we both look at the same time, we will never see exactly the same thing, since we will be looking at it from slightly different positions, and with slightly different visual systems - nonetheless, our experiences constitute parts of one and the same pattern, the pattern which this particular tree is - whose parts are in turn parts of larger patterns, such as the pattern of trees-in-general.) But, the thing is, even though physical objects are all in our minds, we don't have complete control over the contents of our own minds, and even less over the minds of others, which is why we don't have total control over physical reality.

If humans co-create the material world, why do we create it so the experience of it is such a negative one for so many humans?

You are assuming that just because reality is the contents of our minds, that it would therefore be whatever we want it to be. The contents of own minds aren't what we want them to be (e.g. the depressed person can't get the depressive thoughts out of their head, no matter how much they wish they could) - so why should we expect that reality as a whole be as we want it to be, even if it is reducible to the contents of our minds?

Do non-humans have minds?

I believe at least some non-human animals do. I certainly believe dogs do. On the other hand, I don't believe that flies or ants do. (They might have "minds" in some computational sense, but I don't think they have minds in the sense of constituting persons - I don't believe they have qualia-bearing minds, which are the kinds of minds I care about.) As to where to draw the line between dogs and ants, I don't know exactly.

If all minds combine to make one mega-mind what does it think?

That's an interesting question, but I don't think answering it is essential to idealism. Idealists shouldn't be expected to know the answer to every possible question about mind, any more than materialists should be expected to know the answer to every possible question about matter.

Did the Earth exist before there were people? If so, why?

An idealist could give multiple answers to that question. Bishop Berkeley's argument was that God observes all of the universe, so the universe would have existed before any minds observed it from within, because the mind of God was observing it from without. Personally, even though I believe in God, I don't find that position convincing. Another much more radical option is that the universe only exists when minds exist in it, so if prior to intelligent life existing in this universe, this universe did not exist. But I think maybe that position goes too far. Another viewpoint is that a pattern in observation can have both observed and unobserved components - of course, infinitely many patterns are compatible with the observation, but one of those will be the simplest, or maybe some of those will be equally simplest ("simplest" can be objectively defined using Kolmogorov complexity). But the unobserved has a lesser degree of existence than the observed (and something which is different in many equally simple patterns has less existence than something which is the same across all or many of those patterns, or which is the way it is in a single maximally simple pattern). So even though in one sense the universe only began to exist when the first mind arose, its existence extends before that point, and that includes the existence of things within the universe (such as the Earth), but with a lesser degree of existence than it has currently.

As an idealist, I don't deny that matter exists. I just deny that it exists independently of mind. We all agree that matter exists, so no evidence is needed on that point; but you have not provided any evidence that it exists independently of mind. Why believe a claim without evidence?

In case you hadn't noticed I was critiquing your premise at a much more basic level by suggesting that minds as you have defined them don't exist apart from subjective experience.

Which I don't believe is a critique that can be sustained without materialist assumptions - and if you assume materialism in your argument, then your argument against idealism or dualism is circular ("Materialism is true because materialism is true").

I have provided no evidence that matter exists independently of a Strauss waltz either but I strangely feel little pressure to do so.

An absurd comparison. Philosophers have argued for centuries about the relationship between mind and matter. The question of whether "matter exists independently of a Strauss waltz" has never seriously come up.

You are apparently making a claim that matter arises from mind (whose mind is unclear). What is your evidence.

You are apparently making a claim that mind arises from matter (which matter is unclear). What is your evidence.

Really? The number 7 exists, and it's not a material object.

The number 7 does not exist in anything like the same way as an apple.

And no one is suggesting it does. Mathematical and physical objects exist in different ways, no one is denying that. But they both exist.

The number 7 is a mental abstraction. Do all mental abstractions exist?

Do the laws of physics exist independently of the human mind? Or are they just mental abstractions? I would have thought, as a materialist, you would say they have an existence independent of the human mind, and hence are more than just mental abstractions. And yet, they contain dimensionless physical constants (like the fine-structure constant), and fundamental mathematical constants (like pi). (Dimensional physical constants, expressed in non-natural units, are obviously human abstractions, since our choice of units is arbitrary.) And these physical and mathematical constants, an essential component of these laws of physics, are real numbers. So are numbers just mental abstractions? If they are, the laws of physics are just mental abstractions too.

Along with Plato do you believe an ideal chair exists of which all material chairs are crude physical imitations? If it does, who sits on it?

My views have some similarities with Plato, but my views are not the same as his. In my view, "chair" is a high-level pattern in the experiences of minds, and individual chairs are lower-level experiences in the experiences of those minds.

Does the number 7 exist for a snail?

Does the Andromeda galaxy exist for the snail? Well, the snail has no concept of it (if it has any concepts at all). But we do not think less of the existence of the Andromeda galaxy due to snail's ignorance of it. In the same way, we should not think less of the existence of the number 7 just because the snail knows nothing about it.

Sorry to seem so critical

I'm not offended in any way. You speak your mind, and I'll speak mine. (There's that pesky word again.)

It just seems to me, and I may be as wrong about you as you are about me, that you are looking for a way for what you'd like to be true to be true and in so doing skipping over some of your own presumptions.

If that is true for me, then I think it is equally if not more so true for you.

Regards, Zack

[pancreasman]

There is more to the mind than just its thoughts, but the thoughts of a mind are a major aspect of it. I never said you were learning all there is to know about my mind; just that you were learning something about my mind, and my thoughts are an important aspect of my mind (but by no means the only aspect.) And while you are learning something about my mind, you are learning nothing about my body.

I posed the question of which view was correct, idealism, materialism or dualism, and how we can know which one is correct. You immediately responded with a materialist attack on the concept of "mind", to try to undermine the question. I could equally have responded with an idealist attack on the concept of "matter", in order to undermine the question, but I chose not to. You may say that mind is nothing more than patterns in matter, but I can say that matter is nothing more than patterns in mind.

So you assert. I could equally assert that there are no objective elements of the physical universe independent of the minds that observe it. Competing assertions don't get us very far though.

So you assert. And I can assert the opposite, that you can't have a physical universe without minds observing it.

Why does the burden of proof rely solely on my ideas, and not on yours? You seem to think that to idealists belong all the burden of proof, and to materialists none. How about we propose instead that the burden of proof is equal on both sides. Wouldn't that be the more rational approach?

If you don't agree with my definitions of "mind" and "soul", provide alternatives.

Something can change its properties without changing its identity. Angela is unmarried today and married tomorrow, but Angela is still Angela. If we took your approach to its logical conclusion, then it would be impossible for objects to exist across time, since as soon as the object changed in even the slightest, it would no longer be the same object, but rather a different one.

An analogy for a materialist: A photon leaves the surface of the sun, and a few minutes later it hits the surface of the earth. Along its journey, the photon's position is constantly changing, but it is still the same photon. So an entity's properties can change, even while it remains the same entity. In the same way, the contents of my mind can change, even while it remains the same mind.



In my belief, physical objects are just patterns which exist in the experiences of minds. These patterns exist, not just within one mind, but also among different minds. (We both look at a tree - even if we both look at the same time, we will never see exactly the same thing, since we will be looking at it from slightly different positions, and with slightly different visual systems - nonetheless, our experiences constitute parts of one and the same pattern, the pattern which this particular tree is - whose parts are in turn parts of larger patterns, such as the pattern of trees-in-general.) But, the thing is, even though physical objects are all in our minds, we don't have complete control over the contents of our own minds, and even less over the minds of others, which is why we don't have total control over physical reality.

You are assuming that just because reality is the contents of our minds, that it would therefore be whatever we want it to be. The contents of own minds aren't what we want them to be (e.g. the depressed person can't get the depressive thoughts out of their head, no matter how much they wish they could) - so why should we expect that reality as a whole be as we want it to be, even if it is reducible to the contents of our minds?

I believe at least some non-human animals do. I certainly believe dogs do. On the other hand, I don't believe that flies or ants do. (They might have "minds" in some computational sense, but I don't think they have minds in the sense of constituting persons - I don't believe they have qualia-bearing minds, which are the kinds of minds I care about.) As to where to draw the line between dogs and ants, I don't know exactly.

That's an interesting question, but I don't think answering it is essential to idealism. Idealists shouldn't be expected to know the answer to every possible question about mind, any more than materialists should be expected to know the answer to every possible question about matter.

An idealist could give multiple answers to that question. Bishop Berkeley's argument was that God observes all of the universe, so the universe would have existed before any minds observed it from within, because the mind of God was observing it from without. Personally, even though I believe in God, I don't find that position convincing. Another much more radical option is that the universe only exists when minds exist in it, so if prior to intelligent life existing in this universe, this universe did not exist. But I think maybe that position goes too far. Another viewpoint is that a pattern in observation can have both observed and unobserved components - of course, infinitely many patterns are compatible with the observation, but one of those will be the simplest, or maybe some of those will be equally simplest ("simplest" can be objectively defined using Kolmogorov complexity). But the unobserved has a lesser degree of existence than the observed (and something which is different in many equally simple patterns has less existence than something which is the same across all or many of those patterns, or which is the way it is in a single maximally simple pattern). So even though in one sense the universe only began to exist when the first mind arose, its existence extends before that point, and that includes the existence of things within the universe (such as the Earth), but with a lesser degree of existence than it has currently.

Which I don't believe is a critique that can be sustained without materialist assumptions - and if you assume materialism in your argument, then your argument against idealism or dualism is circular ("Materialism is true because materialism is true").

An absurd comparison. Philosophers have argued for centuries about the relationship between mind and matter. The question of whether "matter exists independently of a Strauss waltz" has never seriously come up.

You are apparently making a claim that mind arises from matter (which matter is unclear). What is your evidence.

And no one is suggesting it does. Mathematical and physical objects exist in different ways, no one is denying that. But they both exist.

Do the laws of physics exist independently of the human mind? Or are they just mental abstractions? I would have thought, as a materialist, you would say they have an existence independent of the human mind, and hence are more than just mental abstractions. And yet, they contain dimensionless physical constants (like the fine-structure constant), and fundamental mathematical constants (like pi). (Dimensional physical constants, expressed in non-natural units, are obviously human abstractions, since our choice of units is arbitrary.) And these physical and mathematical constants, an essential component of these laws of physics, are real numbers. So are numbers just mental abstractions? If they are, the laws of physics are just mental abstractions too.

My views have some similarities with Plato, but my views are not the same as his. In my view, "chair" is a high-level pattern in the experiences of minds, and individual chairs are lower-level experiences in the experiences of those minds.

Does the Andromeda galaxy exist for the snail? Well, the snail has no concept of it (if it has any concepts at all). But we do not think less of the existence of the Andromeda galaxy due to snail's ignorance of it. In the same way, we should not think less of the existence of the number 7 just because the snail knows nothing about it.

I'm not offended in any way. You speak your mind, and I'll speak mine. (There's that pesky word again.)

If that is true for me, then I think it is equally if not more so true for you.

Regards, Zack

I am not a materialist.I just don't like poor thinking.

[ZackMartin]

I am not a materialist

What are you then?

[pancreasman]

What are you then?

Vague, just like it says.

[ZackMartin]

Vague, just like it says.

You said "There is no objective elements of your mind independent of your body. You can't have a mind without a body." If that is not materialism, what is?